1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a method of determining an operating drive voltage of an ink-jet head which ejects ink droplets to a recording medium upon driving of an actuator for thereby performing printing, an ink-jet recording apparatus and a superposed-pattern-recorded article.
2. Discussion of Related Art
As an ink-jet recording apparatus equipped with this type of ink-jet head, there has been known one which ejects ink in pressure chambers to a recording medium through nozzles by driving an actuator such as a component constituted by piezoelectric elements for thereby changing the pressure in the pressure chambers communicating with the nozzles, so as to perform recording. In this respect, even where the ink-jet head is driven by a specified drive voltage, an ejection speed of the ink droplets may deviate from an intended value due to a variation in the resistance to an ink flow from ink chambers to the nozzles, a variation in the electric characteristic of the actuator and so on. The deviation in the ejection speed may cause deviation in attaching positions of the ink droplets from intended positions, thereby causing a risk of deteriorating the recording quality of the ink-jet recording apparatus. To deal with this, U.S. Pat. No. 5,212,497 corresponding to JP-A-5-185589 discloses a method of adjusting the ejection speed of the ink droplets comprising optically measuring the speed of ejection of the ink droplets from the ink-jet head and adjusting a resistance value of a drive circuit of the actuator by laser trimming, for the purpose of determining the drive voltage of the ink-jet head such that the ejection speed of the ink droplets is equal to an intended prescribed value.